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Sermons December 12

Here's the weekly sermon post. It's long, and you don't have to read it if you don't want to. I just want to enable you to catch up if you missed or review if you missed something. The outline/sermon guide that you see is what I wrote in preparation to preach. It is often at least slightly different from what I preach, because I don't read it, just refer to it. You're welcome to tell me that it would have been better to preach what I wrote rather than what I preached!

Sermon: Isaiah 53: Love: Shown to us through the suffering of the Messiah

Text: Isaiah 53

Title: Love Sacrifices

Theme: The Suffering Messiah

Location: FBC Almyra

Date: 12/12/10

So, today we come to love. Love is, like many of the words that we find in Scripture, one of those words that does not quite mean what many people think it means. It's a word that many people use on a daily basis. We love a good cup of coffee or the feel of a clean shot at a deer. We'd love for gas prices to come down or for soybean prices to come up.

We love it when the Hogs win, and love it when the Yankees lose. We love dolphins or Dolphins, we love a good movie or a good book. We love our church, we love our kids, our parents, our family, and we especially ought to love our wives or husbands.

So, how is it that one word can express our feelings about such a wide variety of ideas. Well, quite frankly, that's where our confusion comes in. We're generally so careless with the word love that we miss what it really means.

You see, to love is to do more than just have strong feelings about something or even someone. Love is, well, something quite different from that. Let's take a look at Isaiah 53:

(I took out Isaiah 53. You can look it up or click it to see it.)

Now, let's look at how this matches with our images of love. Usually we picture smiles and hearts, and yet here we see something very different.

We see suffering here, we see anguish. How is this love?

We need to understand love a little better. Love is not something that is only a feeling. Love is the commitment of your life to do for someone what is in their best interest, no matter what the cost to yourself, the commitment to treat them as God has treated them and us.

Love:

Love observes

Love observes the need of the beloved

What is it that people need?

People need....food

Clothing

Shelter

The latest and greatest cell phone...

We are often not capable of sorting out our own needs

We think we need things

Yet the things we think we need often destroy us

Think of the cycle...

Speaking to the people, he went on, “Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.”

16–19 Then he told them this story: “The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!2

8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 3

God is aware of our needs, and holds a clearer understanding of them than you ever will

He knew we had:

Sickness

Grief

Sorrows

He knew we were separated from God

Love participates

So He came to know them

Not just to see them

But to experience them

He bore Himself the same griefs

The same sorrows

Even though the baby in the manger is the fullness of God, He has clothed Himself in human form and come weakly

Love bears the cost:

To relieve our suffering: affliction

To relieve our sickness: scourging

To relieve our isolation: Smitten

To relieve our rejection: His own rejection

Love sees it through

The story of Christmas doesn't really begin at the manger, and certainly cannot end there

Rather, it began when God said “Let us make man....”

And it ends?

Verse 12: Christ has been allotted a portion, given a reward, and borne the sin of many

As He brings us back to Himself, finishing the task, the story winds towards its end.

Will you come back today? Will you surrender your fighting? Will you stop striving against the Almighty and accept His sacrifice, His stripes, His love? He has seen what you need, and has made the provision. He has provided the faith you need, has been lifted up from the earth on the Cross, and again at the ascension. Your debt is paid, if you will surrender and accept what He offers: a cross, true, but the cross that He gives you strength to bear.

Accept it today. It is only when you do that you receive what love has: what you need.

Judah: Leah's 4th son, before there is an interruption in her bearing of children; the one who thought up selling Joseph; also the one who persuades Jacob to let Benjamin go to Egypt, offers himself as a pledge

Perez, by Tamar: Judah sinfully would not allow Tamar to have his 3rd son as a husband, and then found himself the father of her children. Neither Tamar nor Judah behaved very well here.

Amminidab, Nashson, Salmon---not a lot of info

Boaz: see the book of Ruth. Apparently a profitable farmer

Ruth: a Moabite woman, and the Israelites and Moabites did not get along. Likely from a family of idol-worshipers, and Chemosh/Molech was a bad idol.

Obed, Jesse: not much here. Shepherds, and a tendency to overlook the runt of the family

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